Training Moms to Teach Their Kids About Abstinence, Sexuality, and Pornography

Category: Abstinence

On November 18th, I rode the Manta roller coaster at Sea World, Orlando. After a thrilling ride of hanging up side down, we pulled into the station..drool dripping down my chin…I looked over at my husband and gasped, “My back doesn’t feel right.” My kids talked me into riding the coaster. I had successfully rode two other coasters and was motion sickness free so I didn’t want to press my luck any further. But they talked me into it. It WAS a thrilling ride! Your feet dangle off the bottom of your seat and just before they launch you out into the atmosphere, your coaster car is tilted so you are completely face down. I have never been on a coaster like it and won’t ever try it again! Twelve chiropractic appointments later, X-ray, a back brace, two physical therapy appointments with dry needling, many massages from my family, heating and icing therapy, exercises at home, and now a gym membership so I can get my core and back strong again….I am much better. I am so thankful to be able to finally ski now, but I do have to forfeit playing volleyball for a bit. In fact, if I miss a day at the gym, the pain in my back reminds me that I must exercise in order to be pain-free. I have a constant reminder of my costly coaster ride. So my 60 seconds of fun ended in misery, loss of activity, loss of time, expensive Dr. visits, and no desire to ride a roller coaster ever again. It was definitely not worth it!

However, I having been using this accident to teach my kids life lessons…..one nasty errant word can have lasting effects. One 60 second angry fight can destroy a relationship. Viewing pornography just a couple of times can lead to addiction, guilt, shame. A short sexual relationship can have life-long consequences especially if you contract an STD. One drive behind the wheel intoxicated can lead to irreversible trauma. A quick nude photo texted to some one is guaranteed to wind up on a porn site ( I learned that from a friend who works for an organization that finds on-line perpetrators…how scary is that!) And now recently, a three minute bullet tirade that left 17 innocent teens dead and at least 14 wounded. Trauma can be created in seconds….and ignite a lifetime of wounds, scars, and pain. Start talking to your kids about the choices they are making. Remind them that in just 60 seconds…a life can drastically change. My daughter will enter high school soon. We have been chatting about vaping, sex, pornography, drinking, smoking, drugs. All of it. Next time you are in the car, ask your kids what they know about vaping. I like to ask my kids what their friends are doing. Who is dating who…its easier for kids to talk about their friends. Then you can lead the conversation to talking about themselves. Don’t wait for the school system or youth group leader to teach your kids about vaping, drugs, and sex. I have had several speaking engagements recently both to adults and students…kids are listening..they want information..Talk to them. Help them prevent a 60 second activity that could lead to a lifetime of heartache.

If you have a child struggling with porn…try “Forcefield Online”. It gives a daily report of where they have been on Safari, how long they were there, ect. Shows every picture they take, receive, any apps they add or delete etc. You can also control how long a child is on any app and you can remove apps. http://forcefield.me

By Amy

Posted in Abstinence, Sex Education

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A friend called me out today. She said, “Why aren’t you writing any more on your blog? People need to hear what you have to say. I need to hear what you have to say. Start blogging again. It’s time.” That is a true friend. One who calls you out when you need it. A straight shooter. I don’t really have an excuse except that I get intimidated by the big guns who post/blog about pornography and abstinence..big guns like Covenant Eyes, or Educate Empower Kids, people who have lots of letters after their name…BUT then I remembered. God uses ALL of us to further his kingdom. I felt conviction, so I repented about my lazy blogging and am moving forward. You grow where you are planted and so it’s time to grow again.

Conviction can sound like a bad thing. But it’s not..it is more of a challenge to change. Conviction is not shame or guilt. It’s a strong encouragement to move in a different direction. Conviction often moves us toward repentance which is always a good thing. Our kids need their parents to be straight shooters…call them out. Your teenager with a phone needs you to call him out on what he is looking at on his phone. Remind him that the phone was given to him on loan and you can check it out whenever you feel led. Check out his apps, his texts… “Oh but I don’t want to invade his privacy”….your child is your CHILD. Teenagers are still children with an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex which means they can and will make stupid decisions. So you need to parent them and hold them responsible for what they are looking at. Conviction sounds a lot like accountability….Every teenager needs it.

Your littles need a dose of accountability too. Monitor them during playtime so that it’s not a “free for all”. They need to learn self-control. It’s not okay to write in books, rip out pages, dump all their toys. You are building a foundation for self control, discipline, and fair play. Character is developed at home, not at school. Hold your little people and big people accountable for dinner time manners, making their beds, putting dishes in the sink or dishwasher. All of these little things translate to self-control and discipline later. Stop them when they pick their nose and especially when boys adjust themselves or even fondle themselves…It leads to habits that are hard to break later once hormones kick in because their brains become conditioned to their hand gratification at a young age. If they keep it up, self gratification can become a habit especially when they get exposed to pornography. Mix that in with a sexual culture, hormones, and an Iphone where porn is easy to access, and you have a perfect storm that could have been prevented by just teaching a little bit of self control when they were young.

TALK to your kids about everything….especially sex. When your 4 year old asks, “What is sex?” Don’t freak out. Just say that it is a special relationship that God designed for married people. You don’t have be graphic until you get a graphic question. You can tell a 6 year old who asks more detail. “God gave men a special seed and He gave women a special seed. When the time is right, God allows the seeds to come together and make a baby.” These are all questions that I fielded this week with young moms and it reminded me it was time to blog again. (Thank you LB for encouraging me.)

I have been speaking to MOPS groups and teens so I haven’t been a total hermit but I needed the reminder to get my booty in gear again. And so do you….what do you need to call your kids out on? Books they are reading..movies…media time…relationships…language..maybe they are just plain lazy. What do you need to tighten up with your little ones? Take a break from media and read to your kids. Talk to them in the car instead of watching a video. We just finished a media fast for a week and just taking media away erased some issues I was having. Try it. I know it’s hard; especially if media is the only way you get a break, but let me just challenge you to teach your kids to play alone. Our culture is one of indulgence especially in media. Learn to function without it now and then.

Conviction leads us to repentance…which leads us to growth. I want to grow as a parent and I want my kids to grow into mature, self-controlled adults who Love God and Love others.

Posted by Amy in Abstinence, Pornography, Sex Education

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Today I heard a very sobering comment from a 4 year old in a class I was helping in at church. We were reading a Fall story about a squirrel that was gathering nuts, berries, and other foods for the winter months. The other animals of the forest wanted Squirrel to play but he said, “I am just too busy.” The 4 year old raised his hand and said, “That’s what my daddy says to me every time I ask him to play with me..he says ‘I am too busy’.” Sadly, we parents say that phrase way too often to our kids and we miss out on opportune times to have conversations with our kids. We took our kids camping for a long weekend. Even though we spent hours with them, they still wanted our attention the very next day. You can’t “bank time” with your kids. They need us every day whether we are “too busy” or not. When my kids were toddlers, my pediatrician told me to make sure that I was spending 20 minutes on the floor with my kids every day. I said to him, “Really, you have to tell people that?” Yes. Yes he does… because the average parent spends only 10 minutes a day talking with their kids. At least that is what he told me. How sad. At the end of the day, relationships matter. The most important relationships are the ones with the people in your own home. And I assure you, if you aren’t making time deposits into your kids, you won’t be able to withdraw much when it comes time to have some hard or uncomfortable conversations. Talk candidly with your kids about lots of subjects. Turn off the movie in the car ride and start singing and talking. Put down your “to do” list and play with your kids. Make an effort. I didn’t blog for a month. I didn’t make time to blog…..it wasn’t that I could’t…I just didn’t. Don’t make that mistake with your kiddos. Good parenting requires sacrifice on the parts of the parents…sacrificing your agenda…a dream job….possessions…a social life…but those are worth it when you raise kids who know how to love God and love others. So slow down and spend some time with your kids every day. Make sure they know they are a priority. And if you are brave, ask them if they think you are too busy to play. Because spending time with your kids is never wasted time. It’s just time well spent.

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I had several speaking engagements in June and I think I might have learned more than my audiences. My biggest take-away was that most people in this world have holes and lots of them. Some holes are huge and are a result of trauma. Major trauma like sexual abuse, divorce, death of a parent as a child, physical and verbal abuse, addiction to pornography, drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, accidents that result in serious physical damage, absent parents, and other dramatic trauma. But trauma doesn’t always have to be so dramatic either. Holes can come from major disappointment and loss. Getting cut from a sports team or not making a drama production can cause a hole. Loss of friendship from a move across the country or a friendship ending due to bitterness and jealously can cause a hole. Hurtful words from a parent to a child can cause a hole. A child not meeting his parent’s expectations can cause a hole in both parents and children. The bottom line is that we are all broken people. I don’t care how confident people appear on the outside, on the inside, they have holes. The difference is what you FILL the hole with. Now I am Bible-thumping and I really hope that I live my faith out-loud. I have chosen to fill my holes with TRUTH from the Bible. I know that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I know that I am God’s masterpiece created to do good things. I know that there is no condemnation in Christ. I know that God forgives those who ask and makes us new creations. BUT, lots of people don’t know these truths or they have forgotten them and they fill their holes with garbage….pride, pity, financial success, impure images, impure relationships, bitterness, anger, selfishness, rage, isolation. They settle for a substitute for love and relationships instead of God’s plan for love and relationships. Our culture offers lots of dangerous options for filling our holes. Most of them are cheap replacements for GOD’s TRUTH. For example, an insecure girl buys into the lie that she ought to dress provocative, act sexy and aggressive in order to snag a boy…evening sending him nude photos on SnapChat (that was the story I heard over and over in June from lots of moms), but this was never God’s design. So as moms, what do we do??? Teach your kids about God’s truth. Encourage inner beauty with your daughter and character development. Integrity starts with developing character traits such as perseverance, discretion, confidence, sincerity, modesty-both of dress and heart, poise. Spend lots of time with your kids. Did you know that kids who have dinner less often with their parents are more likely to be involved in many risky behaviors. (1) So this summer, make dinner a priority!

Because we all have holes, we all need compassion. Many people haven’t filled their holes with God’s Truth and they have traded Biblical Truth for a cultural norm…in relationships…in media…in addictive behavior….in sexual promiscuity…just to name a few. People need compassion and acceptance…that doesn’t mean that we approve of all behavior however. You can LOVE without APPROVAL.…any parent knows that. I love my children even though I do not approve of their behavior or choices. As humans we tend not to like people who don’t agree with us or approve of our choices. And that’s where LOVE breaks through….Love says, “Think twice about that decision.” Love challenges and says, “Are you feeling pitiful or prideful in this situation?” Love sharpens, chastises, corrects, challenges; love doesn’t always agree but it is patient, kind, it is not boastful, it is not proud, it does not self-seek. It is not easily angered nor does it keep record of wrong. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. (2) Love sees the holes in others and responds with compassion rather than judgement. Loving is way harder than liking. Love, not agreement, keeps families together, communities together. I live in a wonderful community and I definitely don’t see eye to eye with all the members of my community…but I would help any of them in time of need because I choose love. Teach your kids this concept: Loving without agreement. If your family identity is based on Scripture, then you will have to love people without agreeing with them because your convictions will be different. But isn’t that what Jesus did? He loved people, not their choices. We can do the same.

TIP: This summer, eat as many dinners together as a family as you can. Moms, read the book Girls Uncovered by McIlhaney, Bush. Teach your kids how to love people, not agree with them. And get off SnapChat.

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I graduated from high school in 1989 without a cell phone. In fact, CD’s had only been around a about 7 years. During my collegiate years, the answering machine evolved as well as the Internet or World Wide Web. Most of my professors were against using the Internet as a source for any research papers. I started teaching in 1994-1995, which apparently was a banner year for technology because the cell phone became popular, email, Yahoo ,PlayStation and DVD’s all had a market….and hand sanitizer became popular too! Google and computer animation developed in 1998 and introduced us to Toy Story, Bug’s Life, Shrek, Monsters Inc, Shrek, and finally Frozen. Since my children have been born in 2004, 2007, I Phones, Wii, and Xbox have evolved. We live in a fast-paced every changing world!

It took 55 years for the telephone to have 50 million users. It took the Internet 4 years to have 50 million users. In 35 days, Angry Birds had 50 million users. (techworm.net) One pornography site transfers 4,000 pages a second! (Barna) The average American kid will view 14,000 sexual references each year….only a 165 will deal with abstinence, self-control, STD’s, pregnancy (American Academy of Pediatrics). The world is NOT the same place that your were raised in. So as the media world spins out of control around you, what conversations have you had with your kids about abstinence, self-control, STD’s, pregnancy? If they are little, use every opportunity to teach self control, especially with boys. I had a conversation with a mom recently and she told me that her 8 year old son likes to play with his “goodies”. She told him it was fine as long as he did it in his room and not in public. I think she missed the boat. What a great opportunity to have a conversation about self control and why we don’t play with our own genitals in public or private. Once the dopamine rush hits from the genital stimulation, we can condition our genitals to only respond to our hands. This is Not God’s design for our bodies. We need to exercise self control with our bodies. We exercise self control with candy, soda, junk food, and hopefully media use, just like we exercise self control with our bodies. Combine self-gratification and pornography and you have the perfect storm for addiction, erectile dysfunction, and sexual dysfunction. Don’t be over-confident in your parenting…don’t assume that your kids are doing what they should be in the privacy of their rooms. Keep an open door policy when they have a device in their rooms. Then visit the room often to hold them accountable. Most of us who are parenting today didn’t have access to the media that our kids have today. Therefore, we better be talking to them about what they are being exposed to, especially in the arena of sexuality. In addition, TV’s in kids’ rooms can cause sleep issues, freedom issues, and exposure to content that their brains just are not ready to process or handle. Wise old YODA from Star Wars says, “Over confidence is the most dangerous form of carelessness.”

TIP: Keep your kids bedroom doors open more than closed. Be a careful, watchful parent. Have a conversation with your son about his goodies and not touching or playing with them and WHY.

Posted by AMY in Sex Education and Abstinence

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Yup! You read that correctly…a friend of mine saw that on her daughter’s cell phone. A boy from school texted her and wrote, “Send me a nude.” Let me just translate that for your stinging mama’s ears…that brazen boy wanted the girl to take a nude photo of herself and send it to him. Seriously, what is this world coming to?? Pornography has so de-sensitized our brains that young men think nothing of asking a girl for such a picture. I have to wonder if pornography is teaching young boys about sexuality, rather than parents teaching boys about sexuality. Unfortunately, we live in a society where sexting is so common and a girl does whatever the guy asks to get him to stop pressuring her or she consents in order to cement the relationship, meaning she thinks that the boy will stay with her forever if she concedes to having sex or provide sexual acts. We need to raise daughters who are confident enough to say, “NO”, even if it means no boyfriend and no date to prom. We live in a culture where girls are supposed to provide sex acts in exchange for affection. In a recent article I read that (by fightthenewdrug.com) a 15 year old girl said that she didn’t enjoy sex at all, but that getting it out of the way was the only way her boyfriend would stop pressuring her and watch a movie. WHAT?? One girl said, that her boyfriend told her, she could have a kiss if she gave him a blow job……cuz that’s an even exchange….NOT. So how do we raise daughters in a culture like this? FAMILY IDENTITY. Help your daughter become confident in who she is without needing a boyfriend. DADS, date your daughters…tell her she is enough and beautiful. Spend as much time with her as you can. Pour into her..Take her out for ice-cream every Sunday and tell her all the things you love about her. If you are a single mom, do the same. Pour into her so that she has confidence. Confident girls know how to say NO and confident girls walk away because they know they are worth the wait. If you are a Jesus loving family, remind your daughter that she is a princess of the King of Kings. I tell my daughter that boys take longer to grow up and mature than girls and that’s why high school relationships often don’t last. Get your daughter involved in after school activities that help her become confident. Help her find a niche like athletics, drama, or music, or even a job but remind her that her niche doesn’t define her but it does give her confidence and it keeps her too busy for a boyfriend. If possible, model an excellent marriage so that your daughter longs for marriage and not a relationship that ends in heart-break. And finally, talk to her..all the time about everything. Her identity needs to be in your family and not her friends or her relationships. Whether you are a single mom, blended family, or married, spend a ton of time as a family. Play board games, watch movies, go for walks, bike rides, hikes, ski, sit and talk at coffee shops….the more time you spend with your kids while they are young, the more time they will want to spend with you as they get older. Parenting is hard; you might not even like your daughter at times, but the more time you spend with her, the better chance she has at becoming a confident woman, so confident that a boy wouldn’t even dare to ask for a nude.

Posted by AMY in Pornography and Abstinence

The article that I read was called Sex Before Kissing: How 15-year-old Girls are Dealing with Porn-Addicted Boys. Published April 1, 2016 by Melinda Tankard Reist. Go to fightthenewdrug.org for more information or to read the article.

TIP: Limit media use in your family. Wait as long as possible to get your kids a phone and when you do, get the simplest one possible. Teach your daughter confidence. Model confidence.

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“Our findings suggest that a higher-quality relationship between adolescents and their parents, especially between mothers and daughters, may protect against early sexual initiation. Pediatricians and other health care professionals should be able to explain to parents that early sexual intercourse can be associated with negative health outcomes, but that parents can play an important role in promoting healthy sexual behaviors.” (Pediatrics, Volume 38, number 6, December, 2016) Of course parents play a role in the lives of their children!!! Do we seriously need a medical magazine to remind us that strong parenting leads to strong kids? But you know what? That’s still good news and encouraging–Moms, we need to be TALKING to our girls..about lots of stuff, including HPV. Human Papillomavirus is the number one STD in the nation right now according to the CDC. The scary part is that you can contract it by sexual contact, not just vaginal sex. In fact, according to the CDC handout that I obtained from my pediatrician, most people will become infected at some point in their life. About 14 million Americans become infected each year..including teens. Thousands of men and women get cancers and diseases from HPV. The good news is that most infections will go away and not cause serious problems. However, HPV can cause cervical cancer, vaginal, vulvar cancer in females, penile cancer in males, and throat and anal cancer in males and females. Approximately 12,000 women get cervical cancer each year and about 4,000 die from it. Gardasil-9 can prevent many of these cases. Routinely given at 11 or 12 years old up to 26 years, the vaccination requires 2-3 doses after the initial dose one to two months later. Some docs recommend to start at age 9. Now this may sound alarming but don’t tune out just yet. Many of us hope that our kids will choose sexual purity until marriage…I know I do, but I also know about human nature and moments of weakness. Since HPV can be spread so easily, it’s important to know all the facts. My conservative doctor, nurse and PA friends recommend it as does my PA sister. HPV causes genital warts and from what I understand, it doesn’t completely go away once you have it, it just goes dormant. So really think about this one. You can’t control the current actions of your child’s future mate either so while your child, may abstain from all forms of sexual contact, your child’s future spouse may not. It’s worth thinking about. Once your daughter starts her period, it’s time talk sex, pregnancy, STD’s and abstinence. So start thinking about future conversations with your girl. Your conversations matter and they will influence her…FOR LIFE.

Tip: As your daughter nears 100 pounds, she will be nearing the beginning of her menstrual cycle. Start prepping her for that. After it happens, your next conversations will be about STDs, pregnancy, and abstinence. Think ahead.

posted by AMY in Sex Education and Abstinence

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The average kids eats 21 meals a week plus snacks, but how much are we nourishing our children’s spirits? Don’t you think we need a few spiritual meals a week too? We are going to have some hard conversations with our kids in life. We need to be making deposits into their “love tanks” so that when we need to make a few hard withdrawls, there is something in the tank. How do we fill our kids tanks? We fill their spiritual tanks by taking them church regularly. Having devotional time with them. Listening to quality music with lyrics that nurture the spirit. Our kids need to be involved in church too, whether it be youth group, volunteering in a Sunday school class, or going to Sunday school or just sitting with you in a service. Talk to your kids about the Lord regularly. Pray with them and over them so they can hear you pray too. Teach them to pray even if it means starting off with memorized prayers. Make church and family time a priority. Since we are beings that are more than just a body, we need to nourish our other components too. We are made up of a spirit (that is the part that can commune with God), but also a soul, which is our mind, our will, and our emotions. Other posts have touched on the body and soul, but this post is designed to remind you of your child’s spirit. I don’t remember every sermon or Bible study that I have completed, nor do I remember all the meals I have eaten. Tragically, I can’t remember what I ate yesterday but I know my body received sustenance. The same is for our kids. Their spirits need filled and it doesn’t matter if they remember everything they learned, their spirits will have received nourishment. It is never to late to start going to church, never too late to start reading to them from the Bible. Consistency is modeled and taught. Lay a foundation so that when you need to have a hard conversation on purity, or lying, or pornography, you have something in the tank.

TIP: It’s time for some spiritual nourishment for your children. Make time for it.

Posted by AMY in Abstinence and Sex Education

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This post is for those of you with teens. We live in a culture where the sexual message is all of the following: Sex is Everything, Sex is Nothing, and Love = Sex. All of these messages are deception and unless you have captured the heart of your child, the education they receive concerning sex is from their immature friends whose minds are full of mush ( I was a high school teacher for more than a decade), or their education is from the world via the media. Both are toxic in my book. The cultural pressure is that sex is everything meaning that your relationship is pretty much a friendship unless you are having sex; that sex is the defining piece of your relationship. Girls are told that if you get involved sexually, you are sure to snag your man. On the other hand, sex is nothing meaning that everyone is doing it so what’s the big deal? I had a conversation with a millennial age friend recently and she was telling me about a guy that she had just met that evening who wanted to hook up with her just for the night and he was gutsy enough to ask! In college, my roomies and I called it NCMO (non committed make out)…now it’s non committed sex. She even said there is a new trend called polyamory where people essentially have multiple sexual relationships…(including making babies together, but with no commitment) no more exclusive dating. No need to marry and have a mistress anymore….

I have been married 20 years. I love it and I would marry my hubbs again, and if I die, I hope my man re-marries. Marriage is hard, but it’s the best adventure I have been on. I think sex is awesome too, but it isn’t love. God is love. Sex is an expression of love or lust. Lust is desire gone bad. Really bad. It’s important that you tell your kids about sex from more than just a physical side. Especially for girls, sex involves their body, mind, will, emotions. When the world sends the message that sex is nothing, down plays it to just our bodies, the intimacy of sex is lost and it’s just about body parts and satisfaction. When you have multiple partners, your identity becomes rooted in your relationships or how men feel about you. In a culture of sexual addiction, people jump from partner to partner because the fear of being alone is absolutely terrifying and unbearable. Because, everyone imprints on their first sexual experience, and if “it’s nothing”, then sex becomes nothing. I don’t know about you but standing alone in a bathroom waiting nervously and hoping the pregnancy test is negative or sitting alone in a doctor’s office waiting for the STD diagnosis isn’t my idea of great sex. ( By the way, the average woman/girl gets an STD after only two partners.) The old addage still rings true…“First Comes Love...Trust with our hearts and then allow feelings of attraction to follow. When you love your spouse through the love that you receive out of your relationship with God, you love without strings attached and you learn to love selflessly. Then Comes marriage….a committed relationship where the good, the bad and the ugly is nurtured through grace, mercy, forgiveness, loyalty, trust, honor and respect. Then Comes the Baby in the Baby Carriage…a marriage with sex as the foundation doesn’t stand under the pressure that comes when you raise kids; anyone with kids knows that. But a marriage with a Biblical Foundation can stand.

So…capture the heart of your kids so that you are the influence on their sexual decisions, not the warped world or their immature friends. Explain to them the three deceptions of sex that I listed. Use your own story even if you have a sexual past. (The age of your kids does matter in that conversation so use discretion and prayer before you begin, but know that your past does not dictate the future of your children.) Muscician Matthew West has a great song called Mended. It may be your story….”When you see broken beyond repair, I see healing beyond belief. When you see too far gone, I see one step away from home. When you see nothing but damaged goods, I see something good in the making. I’m not finished yet. When you see wounded, I see mended.” Use your story to talk to your teen, you can leave out graphic details and still get the picture across. Let’s revolutionize sex and put it back in marriage.

TIP: Need help capturing the heart of your kids? My church, Faith Bible Chapel is starting some free parenting classes on Wednesday nights facilitated by Dr. Bob and Gayle Bucknam called Reaching the Heart of Your Child. Topics include changing the tone of your home/first-time obedience/teaching personal responsibility and avoiding entitlement attitudes/instilling values and respect/how to handle screen time and technology/whining, temper tantrums, sibling rivalry, and more. Sign up at http://www.fbci.org/parenting I will be there too!

Posted by Amy in Abstinence, Sex Education

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My family is LOVING watching the Olympics! In fact, we are staying up way to too late to watch it which is not great back to school sleep prep. We noticed that no matter what sport we are watching, all athletes have three characteristics in common: training, perseverance, goal setting. Whether it be a maniac table tennis (should be called ping pong!) player or the British golf star who got a hole in one, or the most decorated Olympian of all times, they all have worked endless hours training for their sport. In an interview with Simone Biles, she talked about having to abstain from proms, home-coming, parties, activities in order to train. But her perseverance paid off and she attained her goal of being the all-around gymnastic champion. She has no regrets of her social abstinence.

In a recent conversation with a young mom, we discussed whether abstinence is a realistic goal for our kids in a world with such sexual promiscuity. We both agreed that as parents, we absolutely promote and teach abstinence and purity, but teaching it is a lot like training for an Olympic sport…it requires training…endless conversations with your kids at teachable moments even if those teachable moments are at 11 pm at night. It requires perseverance on your part and your child’s….teaching discipline,self control, and limiting media from the high chair and beyond. Most importantly, it requires goal setting…..I want kids with a heart for the Lord and a Biblical world view; therefore my standard by which we measure everything is the Bible. One of the best ways, you can train yourself as a parent is to find a mentor, some one who is ahead of you in the parenting Olympics and use them as a resource and counselor. Find a like-minded mom who can remind you of the training your kids need to have for stages in life. Some one who can encourage you to keep persevering even when you want to give up and let your kids play video games till their heads fall off. Even though I am an educated sex education teacher, my mentor has helped me prepare how to talk to my daughter about periods, swim suits, modesty, and dating. While I have the knowledge, she has the experience of raising a daughter to adulthood so together we can dialogue.

So do we set a goal of sexual abstinence for our kids based on the Scriptures? Absolutely. Could we train them toward that? Sure…but what if they fail?? And they just might. Your kids and mine may have a moment of weakness and loose their purity, but that doesn’t mean we don’t train, persevere, or set a goal. The Olympics is a great example of both: those who succeed and those to fail. But those who fail and still rise up are champions in my book too. There is something so satisfying with winning, but loosing has some huge benefits too….you learn grace, mercy, and compassion. So here is my conclusion: Train your kids to win the abstinence Olympics, but if they fail, look at the failure as opportunity because after all….”Grace wins every time.”